Project Proposal
Introduction For my final technology assignment, I have selected 750words.com. Despite the different tools and perspectives that the digitalization of the humanities has introduced, our need for motivation and regimentation when writing has remained constant. Additional technology has undoubtedly changed the way that we view writing and altered the amount of time that we allot for self-expression. To combat this, 750words.com challenges users to type at least 750 words a day, which will be archived and analyzed by various metadata categories. The site turns writing into a gamified competition, with assigned points for reaching continued daily goals and badges to demonstrate sustained success in the online composition community. 750words.com and Digital Humanties With respect to my knowledge of digital humanities and its application within this particular technology, I believe 750words.com fits in the definition of an encounter between traditional goals of literary, linguistic, and compositional inquiry integrated with modern technological tools that push the boundaries between self-discovery and inter-disciplinary scholarship (Reid, 2015, p. 15). The goal for this type of research is to analyze English scholarship in a critical and engaging manner by adopting cutting edge compositional tools that calls upon audiences both inside and outside the academy (Burdick, Drucker, Lunenfeld, Presner, & Schnapp, 2012, p.4). Digital humanities should aim to revive the production and analysis of language and how it works in the wider context. In the words of Carter, Jones, and Hamcumpai (2015), “''If you aren’t building, you aren’t a digital humanist'' (p. 41).” In the digital age, the pervasiveness of writing has led it to become something largely intangible. With all the platforms to share our words, many people seem to have forgotten why they began writing in the first place. As Carter et al. mentions in a chapter related to interdisciplinary scholarship in the digital humanities, “Because writing happens everywhere, we need to study it everywhere ('p.38).” Integrating writing into a moderated, reinforced, socially engaging, and self-critical mode is difficult without a site such as this one, and through these digital implementations, writers are able to produce more and learn to navigate writing in a user-friendly digital interface. Like other software and websites utilized in Digital Humanities, this site “opens up questions of composition and meaning making that reach beyond the concerns of any one academic discipline (Brown, 2015, p. 29).” Features of the Site The most fascinating element of this site is the self-analytical statistical outputs that are compiled both daily and over a span of time. This relates to the tenant of “no interpretation without production; no production without interpretation”, bringing forth a kind of analysis of one’s own writing that would be impossible without this digital tool (Brown, 2015, p. 30). Users of 750words.com are able to better understand their own writing process through tracking the number of words they type and viewing graphs that depict how quickly and consistently they write. Writers are better able to understand their times of top productivity and respond accordingly. The site, which provides information on their statistical models and algorithms for analysis, assigns each entry a rating, analyzes the overall feeling and time orientation of the text, and also categorizes the main subject matter of the passage. 750words.com also performs a word count analysis and provides a cloud diagram to show which words are used most frequently. Rhetoricians and digital humanists, interested not in just what a text ''is, but also what it does will find these features accessible and useful in their research and understanding of baseline quantitative textual research (Boyle, 2015, p. 127). The self-awareness that is presented through the analytic metadata might familiarize readers not only to trends in their own writing, but also how quantitative analysis may be successful in analyzing other literature. This technology, in particular, is accessible to writers of all age, technology proficiency, and performance level. The goal is production, creative engagement, and self-awareness as a writer. I am curious to learn more about the role of this metadata collection and the effect that it has on a writer’s content. With this accessible format, users are able to circumvent notions that with the high productivity of the web, we have overstepped our ability to catalog, analyze, and archive our own writing (Burdick et al., 2012, p.37). Through a site such as 750words.com, we are able '''re-conceptualize publishing not as an endpoint of research, but rather as a step in experimentation and research (Burdick et al., 2012, p. 89). This technology presents writing in a delineated context. Void of distractions, with only a white screen and limited stylistic control of their output, what effect does this have on writing? Writers need not even construct a title before writing, and in the FAQ section, the webmasters justify this choice by asserting that formatting “gets in the way of just writing.” Are visual learners and those more unfamiliar with technology drawn to the user-friendly site? As established in Eyman and Ball’s article on electronic publication (2015), all interfaces are rooted in political, social, and technological choices that impact the content (pp 70). While also considering design as an extension of the argument in the text, it is interesting to consider the way a limitation on design and interface has on the free flow of writing (Eyman & Ball, 2015, pp. 71). Conclusions Writers may utilize this technology to improve our compositional technique, understand more about the way we produce and analyze our own texts, and engage in a wider network of supporters. The site holds us accountable for our writing and lets us more deeply consider the implications of the words that we produce. Posts may be easily printed or published on other platforms, making it an interactive matrix that allows writers to share and revise what they write. This fulfills the tenets of Digital Humanities that utilize technology for wider collaboration and connection (Burdick et al., 2012, p. 24). Ultimately, this site helps produce a smarter computing culture, a hallmark goal of Digital Humanities (Brooks, Lindgren, & Warner, 2015, 226). Through mainstream understanding of what a computer is and how it can contribute to personal creativity and interplay in larger literary discourse, 750words.com is a worthy interactive tool for active consumption, participation, and academic study. Category:Eng460 Category:Proposal Category:750words.com Category:Digital Humanities